For this project I created motion effects for my dance video using After Effects. What I would do is play with the dance moves and draw things that would compliment and accent the dancers. This style of editing has been trending in the dance community lately and can be seen in advertisements and dance projects. Seeing multiple videos use this effect makes me wonder what kind of things I can produce for myself and while I experiment with that, this will also give me the opportunity to get to know After Effects better since this is my second time ever using the program.
Being new to After Effects I have to make time to learn and understand how the program works. That process took me roughly around three hours since I had to watch a couple of 20 to 30 minute guides on YouTube. Eventually I finally got down to editing my dance video which resulted in seven hours of work to produce a 30 second clip. The procedure to create the animations is fairly simple yet it is a tedious process of drawing things in each frame just like how one would animate stop motion films. I have never actually studied animation but luckily I have watched various animation tutorials in the past out of curiosity which gave me a bit of an advantage when trying to create the effects on the video. There were things that I had to understand, for example, how balls bounce or how I can make something look more explosive and impactful.
I am glad I chose this to be my final project after learning much more about After Effects. For this project I did not have to go back to the videos I watched for guidance, I was able to work on this on my own and figure things out when I hit a roadblock. There were moments in this project where I spent time having to figure out the animation of certain things so that they can look more natural and not like they were just slapped onto the video. I do see myself working on more projects with After Effects in the future since, despite it being a lot of time and work, it really brings out great results. As I work on those future projects I hope to improve on smoothing out my animations and pushing myself to tackle difficult effects. The harder the project is the more I will learn.
Moving forward with digital media I hope to be part of the creative process behind video games. I get most of my inspiration from Japanese media from anime to Japanese video games like Final Fantasy. Overtime I am determined to expand my creativity and broaden my skill set so that I can be ready to take on tasks that involve different things from visual aesthetics to coding. This class helped me to learn more about the different programs that are out there for me to practice on and incorporate into my future works.